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I notice we keep coming back the the Thief games. I never really played them, I dabbled around with them back in the day, but something building upon that would certainly make a nice MMO in my opinion.

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Originally posted by Vincenz

Absolutely! In fact, if you complete the quest (still the requirement for exp in any case) you are given BONUS experience for killing no or few monsters. You're also given bonus exp for spotting secret doors and disabling traps. That's all in addition to the same base exp you'd get for completing it in any fashion.

I owe DDO a bit of an apology then. Their rogues can be more like the thieves I imagine than I thought.

When I played DDO (I never got above level 4 I think), I knew you got experience bonuses for genocides and mayhem, so I tended to ensure that everythign died and every crate was at least overturned, if not smashed to bits.

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Until mmorg's are written to be more like pen and paper worlds ( where you can do things like sack some rich guys house or if you are a mage go to a tower of sorcery and research a totally new spell ) instead of shallow hack and slash shadows of such worlds we are going to be left wanting.

An mmo in developmen and read that thread I made. It is about thieving. You will enjoy reading it and you will really feel like it is possible for thieving to be in a game meaningfully. Maybe you can come with more ideas. I haven't touched structure stealing and such very much.. Anyways, just thought I would tell you that you are not the only person out there who wants to steal.

Also.. Something which woke me up. What is this about Shadowbane. can you really be a real thief in that game? And about DDO... Bah. Humbug.

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I feel the one thing about thief class is that they are rarely allowed to actually steal. When they do, they get like 2 copper and stackable pocket lint ...worthless. I understand the balance and economy implications is actually having A class able to steal for a living ..but still its just a shame. Little wonder that Thief is no longer used in MMOs and have largly been replaced by the "rogue' designation

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I'm just don't understand what the Op is looking for. how can you expect a thief have any real purpose in ANY MMO if he main purpose is being a thief. Thief has to be a sub-category, thats why there are rarely called thief's.

WoW there rogues.

D&D there rogues.

EQ2 there Swashbucklers.

Every MMO you must have some sort of ballance with every class, in order to do the same quest Dungeons, and PvP as everyone else, or you may as well have Auto Mechanics too.

As far as thief abilities WoW had it down well, at lv. 38 I would stealth past everything just to fight the boss for a drop on a good dagger all by myself, use flash powder re-stealth and get the heck out of there.

I would stealth into the Hunterland and steal the Mallet needed for ZF all by myself, It would take a party of five to get that !!

I would be soooo deep in caves way above my level that I would really be scared at times.

If I did not have othere stuff to do I could have done creative stuff like this forever !!!

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Originally posted by fischsemmel

Are there any MMOs around that treat thieves like they are actually thieves?

In my experience, every single MMO out there treats the "thief" class(es) as a lightly armored fighter who usually inflicts extra damage against an opponent when he is attacking from behind. Sometimes these so-called thieves also know how to use poison, have some skill with throwing daggers or shooting bows/crossbows, can pick pockets (for very small change). But, basically, they are not a true thief class... they are just, like I said, a variation of a fighter.

Even in DDO, a game that you'd THINK would make a thief what it should be, the thief is less of a thief than he is a lightly armored fighter, who sacrifices some versatility the fighter has for being able to disarm traps and sneak around. Woohoo. Sneaking is so much fun, especially when there is virtually no reason to do any sneaking!

THIS is what I think of when I hear thief, rogue, or any similar thing: a skill-oriented character, who often relies upon luck as much as anything else, who does not fight unless absolutely forced to because he pretty much sucks at it, but who doesn't need to fight, because he has the skills necessary to avoid it and to reach his true objective... whatever it is he's going to steal.

Thieves, in my mind, scale walls in the rich part of town, quietly navigate a courtyard and stick to the shadows to avoid the notice of guards, scale the side of the building to gain access to an open, second-story window, etc. They then navigate the interior of a lavish mansion, obviously in search of valubles. Maybe they find a safe behind a painting and disarm a trap on the safe before skillfully cracking the safe. Of course, they're remaining quiet the whole time so as not to wake the master of the house, asleep with his wife in bed 10 feet away. And, of course, they are clever enough to realize that those steps coming down the hallway mean they'd better cover that safe back up and hide somewhere quick before the guard sticks his head in to check on his employer's safety.

Then, when the thief does crack the safe, he doesn't grab the +5 vorpal longsword of fiery wrath and the studded leather armor of +10 str and con... he grabs the jewels, the banknotes, the deeds, the secret documents that he could later use to blackmail this rich dude... maybe he leaves a calling card for style points. And then he sneaks out as carefully as he snuck in.

If he DOES get spotted, he probably doesn't fight first... he runs, or hides, or whatever. If he does have to fight, he relies, again, on skill. He dodges, moves constantly, attacks when it is safe to do so. He doesn't stand there taking hits while trying to cut the guard's throat... he's a thief, not a berserker.

But you get the picture. I would pay good money to play an MMO where thieves are THIEVES, or that is focused on thieves and their variations (brigands, burglars, pickpockets, spies, even the ever-popular assassin). There's a lot of potential here.

That all works great in a table top game, where the Dungeon Master can create any scenario at will, since all that is required is imagination, and the Dungeon Master also has the ability to balance the game on the fly, rewarding the Theif with just enough loot, and not to much.

It also works well in a Single Player RPG.

But how do you expect that to work in an MMORPG without destroying balance in the game, either in PvE or PvP?

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O.O someone didn't read the description of Rogue and just read what skills they use. Just like many mmo devs. Rogue's are cocky loners that are more of Jack of All Trades. Mainly to show off. They aren't some Assassin who sneaks around behind corners and doesn't want anyone to know who they are. They want everyone to know who they are, what they accomplished, and more importantly they were the main figure behind it.

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Originally posted by page

I'm just don't understand what the Op is looking for. how can you expect a thief have any real purpose in ANY MMO if he main purpose is being a thief. Thief has to be a sub-category, thats why there are rarely called thief's.

WoW there rogues.

D&D there rogues.

EQ2 there Swashbucklers.

Every MMO you must have some sort of ballance with every class, in order to do the same quest Dungeons, and PvP as everyone else, or you may as well have Auto Mechanics too.

As far as thief abilities WoW had it down well, at lv. 38 I would stealth past everything just to fight the boss for a drop on a good dagger all by myself, use flash powder re-stealth and get the heck out of there.

I would stealth into the Hunterland and steal the Mallet needed for ZF all by myself, It would take a party of five to get that !!

I would be soooo deep in caves way above my level that I would really be scared at times.

If I did not have othere stuff to do I could have done creative stuff like this forever !!!

I want a thief class that is a thief (cat burglar, if you prefer), and not a brigand/assassin/dungeon delver. I think that has been well established by now.

How can I expect a thief to have any "real purpose"? Jesus Christ, man. You, and apparently millions of others including most of the MMO devs, are SO FREAKING STUCK on the way WoW and company are built that you can't even imagine a game that is not WoW. You can't even imagine something so incredibly outlandish (note the sarcasm) as a thief that exists for the "real purpose" of stealing stuff. You are so set on believing that the earth is flat you scoff at anyone who says that maybe it is actually a sphere.

Just because what I envision as a thief, because what I want to see in a thief class, is (probably) not directly compatible with WoW as WoW is at this very instant does not mean that what I want could not be made to work within the general framework of WoW with just some relatively limited changes to the game, let alone that my concept of a thief could work in a completely different game.

Here is an example of how something that used to not work in MMOs now is taken for granted, in general. In Everquest 1, pre-Lost Dungeons of Norrath, there were no instances. There was only one of each of the bosses in the game, and they had long respawns. But, there were multiple guilds after these bosses. Obviously there was an issue: there were too few bosses/spawns for the number of guilds interested in killing them. In WoW, though, they tried to fix this issue by instancing. Suddenly, the same boss could be killed by every guild on the server. Gone were worries about competing for the kill, or limited item drops for a large number of players. YOU are someone who ran around on forums before WoW came out, saying "How can there ever be enough bosses for all the players? You just can't make that much content!" You never realized that maybe you don't have to make an infinite amount of content to keep people content, but that you just need to make the content that does exist accessible to everyone. You cannot think outside of the box.

So, my rant about your lack of vision aside, you are somewhat right that "every MMO ... must have some sort of ballance with every class". That is why earlier I mentioned that should a thief like I envision be implemented in present-day MMO that there would have to be mechanics in the game to ensure that thievery wasn't too rewarding for the thief, too easy, or too much of a pain for other players.

That is, of course, assuming that you even put such a thief in a game that is out today. If you designed a game FOR thieves (gee, I feel like I've said this all before...) you wouldn't have quite the same "balance" issue to fuss over.

Finally... if you could keep yourself entertained forever in WoW by using all of the thief-like abilities that your rogue had at level 38, well then I'm going to have to go ahead and say you are very easily entertained. You might be as content with a slinky or a jump rope as you are with WoW.

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Originally posted by CleffyII

O.O someone didn't read the description of Rogue and just read what skills they use. Just like many mmo devs. Rogue's are cocky loners that are more of Jack of All Trades. Mainly to show off. They aren't some Assassin who sneaks around behind corners and doesn't want anyone to know who they are. They want everyone to know who they are, what they accomplished, and more importantly they were the main figure behind it.

Ahh, the universal rogue description. I should have looked there before I said anything. You're right.

But seriously, folks. What someone else has said about what a rogue is does not necessarily have any influence at all on what I think a thief should be, or on what I would like to see in a thief in an MMO.

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Originally posted by fischsemmelAre there any MMOs around that treat thieves like they are actually thieves?

In my experience, every single MMO out there treats the "thief" class(es) as a lightly armored fighter who usually inflicts extra damage against an opponent when he is attacking from behind. Sometimes these so-called thieves also know how to use poison, have some skill with throwing daggers or shooting bows/crossbows, can pick pockets (for very small change). But, basically, they are not a true thief class... they are just, like I said, a variation of a fighter.

Even in DDO, a game that you'd THINK would make a thief what it should be, the thief is less of a thief than he is a lightly armored fighter, who sacrifices some versatility the fighter has for being able to disarm traps and sneak around. Woohoo. Sneaking is so much fun, especially when there is virtually no reason to do any sneaking!

THIS is what I think of when I hear thief, rogue, or any similar thing: a skill-oriented character, who often relies upon luck as much as anything else, who does not fight unless absolutely forced to because he pretty much sucks at it, but who doesn't need to fight, because he has the skills necessary to avoid it and to reach his true objective... whatever it is he's going to steal.Thieves, in my mind, scale walls in the rich part of town, quietly navigate a courtyard and stick to the shadows to avoid the notice of guards, scale the side of the building to gain access to an open, second-story window, etc. They then navigate the interior of a lavish mansion, obviously in search of valubles. Maybe they find a safe behind a painting and disarm a trap on the safe before skillfully cracking the safe. Of course, they're remaining quiet the whole time so as not to wake the master of the house, asleep with his wife in bed 10 feet away. And, of course, they are clever enough to realize that those steps coming down the hallway mean they'd better cover that safe back up and hide somewhere quick before the guard sticks his head in to check on his employer's safety.Then, when the thief does crack the safe, he doesn't grab the +5 vorpal longsword of fiery wrath and the studded leather armor of +10 str and con... he grabs the jewels, the banknotes, the deeds, the secret documents that he could later use to blackmail this rich dude... maybe he leaves a calling card for style points. And then he sneaks out as carefully as he snuck in.If he DOES get spotted, he probably doesn't fight first... he runs, or hides, or whatever. If he does have to fight, he relies, again, on skill. He dodges, moves constantly, attacks when it is safe to do so. He doesn't stand there taking hits while trying to cut the guard's throat... he's a thief, not a berserker.

But you get the picture. I would pay good money to play an MMO where thieves are THIEVES, or that is focused on thieves and their variations (brigands, burglars, pickpockets, spies, even the ever-popular assassin). There's a lot of potential here.

That's exactly how thieves work in Elder scrolls there is also an entire guild with missions for thievery

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Originally posted by sinjin

At least DDO has the class closer to what it should be than any other MMO.

Agreed, but even as a huge DDO supporter I'd like to see DDO include even more of the skillsets in quests too. More use of diplomacy and bluff particularly, for more than just aggro management and the half dozen NPCs it's useful for. I think that would bring a lot to the game, and it seems from the last couple mods they're going that direction.

Again though, as others have said, for you to have a whole "Thief Oriented Campaign" where you've got a very detailed quest set for just one class...you're pretty much going to have to have a game set around that one class, like Thief Online.